


Thoughts Safe Within My Head

by reagancrew



Category: Once Upon a Time (TV)
Genre: (all tws are non-explicit but they are alluded to), Abuse, F/F, Makes mention of, Rape, Self Harm, Song fic, Stable Queen, TW: Self Harm, as well as that horrible fuck leopold, odesza, tw: abuse, tw: rape
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-04
Updated: 2015-01-04
Packaged: 2018-03-05 07:44:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 775
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3111743
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/reagancrew/pseuds/reagancrew
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Emma swears she tastes of salt water and the sea.<br/>She swears Emma’s heart would have burnt itself up long ago, if Emma hadn’t learned to send the heat out through her trembling trembling hands.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Thoughts Safe Within My Head

[It’s Only Odesza ft. Zyra](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wPqTCrm61-I&feature=youtube_gdata_player)

**Ashes to Ashes (Dust to Dust):**

Her teacher orders her to take a heart as one might a sip of water from the well. She already has, she wishes to explain. Is not one enough? 

After his body has grown cold, after her mother wiped her hands together, dry washing them of the dust of a stableboy’s heart, she stared at her own pale hands. Smooth. Empty. A child’s hands, straining to hold everything together with fingers not yet grown. Drowned drenched dripping in blood that had not ever spilled to soak into the hay. She swallows her tears for months; a Queen never cries. The salt rubs her throat raw. Everything tastes like the sea for years. 

****

Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live. Emma Swan does not let her burn. Instead that foolish, idiotic woman comes back through the flames, her palms scalding on Regina’s skin. Her lungs are full of smoke for weeks. She cannot breathe without tasting pine and pitch. She traces the whorls and curves of Emma’s fingerprints with a delicate touch in the early hours of the morning. What parts of themselves have they left in the ashes of the hollowed out building? 

Her mother cannot pull out Emma Swan’s foolish, fearful heart. 

****  
 **I Try To Be Like Water:**

Venom runs as water through his veins, the genie tells her. She laughs and laughs and laughs. The blood staining the child’s hands has faded with adulthood. Dying and dying and dead. She has forgotten the taste of salt water for the taste of blood. She runs firm hands along her own flesh, attempting to excise him. Here his lips, there his fingers. She swipes hard with nails long enough to draw her own blood, bubbling up from beneath her skin, revels in control. Control. Con.trol. Here is her body. Always with her. There is his body, dead. The poison that was in him has been halted, mixed with the venom of a creature neither good nor evil. She raises hands twice stained, strong and commanding to caress her own pale cheeks. 

****

She has never dreamt of Neverland. She learned long ago that Children needn’t grow up to kill. And that only adults can forget the taste of salt water. 

Emma Swan jumps into the sea, and all she wants to do is laugh, because Emma Swan clenches her hands into fists as He did once upon a time, and she has forgotten the taste of blood, but her body has not forgotten to shrink away. To be smaller. But Miss Swan smiles the same way as her son, slow and simple, and carefully carefully carefully. Regina wants to laugh because now she will no longer need to remember nights she did not choose and blood she did not control. But she remembers Henry. And she remembers ash and burning palms and breathing smoke. She takes one more deep breath, does not breathe out again. She waits. 

Emma Swan exhales, salt water gushing from her lungs. Regina remembers the taste of tears, burning down her throat long, long ago. She remembers Henry. She breathes out stale, tired air. She does not speak to Emma until Neverland is in sight. She is afraid she’ll choke if she tries. 

****  
 **Here is Love: Here They Love:**

Crying. Dying. Dead. She dies in purple smoke. Her reborn hands have not killed. Her reborn hands remember the dust of a young love’s heart and the rhythm of poisoned blood thin as water beating through a dying king’s decrepit body. Her reborn hands take the heart of the huntsman, and remember remember remember. Crying. Dying. 

Dead.

*****

Emma Swan does not swallow her tears on Neverland, but Regina watches her try and try and try. (Children living under roofs they cannot call their own, learn quickly not to cry). Emma Swan’s death began over stolen watches and beneath a desert sky, and Regina learns this story slowly. (Time forces everyone to grow up eventually). Emma Swan doesn’t die; Regina makes sure of that. (But she is born a mother twice and is born a daughter twice and births herself as a lover twice in one lifetime). 

Storybrooke is bordered by the sea and the pine forest. And when they return from Neverland, Regina’s reborn hands, thrice cursed, find Emma’s shaking palms, twice born. 

With tongues and teeth. With burning hands and drowned lungs. They love. 

Emma swears she tastes of salt water and the sea. 

She swears Emma’s heart would have burnt itself up long ago, if Emma hadn’t learned to send the heat out through her trembling trembling hands.


End file.
